Ethereum chip
Hardware
algorithm is difficult to solve in memory. In order to make DAG suitable for memory, each GPU needs 1-2gb of memory. If you get an error prompt: error GPU mining. GPU memory fragmentation? It means you don't have enough memory. GPU mining software is based on OpenCL, amd GPU will be faster than NVIDIA GPU of the same level. ASIC and FPGA are relatively inefficient, so they are blocked. To get OpenCL for chip integration platform, try:
amd SDK OpenCL
NVIDIA CUDA OpenCL
Ubuntu Linux settings
for this quick guide, you will need Ubuntu 14.04 or 15.04 and fglrx image driver. You can also use NVIDIA drives and other platforms, but you have to find your own way to get an effective OpenCL installation, such as genoil's ethminer fork
if you are using 15.04, go to & quot; Software and updates 〉 extra drives & quot; Set to & quot; Use the video driver & quot; from fglrx for AMD graphics accelerator
if you are using 14.04, go to & quot; Software and updates 〉 extra drives & quot; Set to & quot; Use the video driver & quot; from fglrx for AMD graphics accelerator;. Unfortunately, for some people, this method may not work, because there is a known program error in Ubuntu 14.04.02 that will prevent you from switching to the exclusive graphics drive necessary for GPU mining
therefore, if you encounter this program error, go to & quot; "Software and update" update & quot; Select & quot; Pre release reliable update proposal & quot;. Then, back to & quot; Software and updates 〉 extra drives & quot; Set to & quot; Use the video driver & quot; from fglrx for AMD graphics accelerator;. After restarting, it's worth checking that the drive is now properly installed (for example, by going to & quot; Additional drives & quot;)
no matter what you do, if you are using 14.04.02, once installed, do not change the drive or drive configuration. For example, the use of aticonfig – initial (especially the - F, - force option) will & quot; Destruction & quot; Your settings. If you accidentally change the configuration, you will need to uninstall the drive, restart, install the drive again and restart.
Ant miner is the first cryptocurrency miner brand in the world with a market share of about 70%. The mining machine is developed by bitmainland and has a patent in mainland China. At the beginning, ant miner had only bitcoin miner. Later, its business expanded to other cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum, dascoin, Leyte, Monroe, etc
ant mining machine adopts ASIC chip designed by bitcontinental, which is proced by TSMC. All chips are made of BM prefix. Each miner has three to four circuit boards, and there are dozens of chips on the circuit board. Therefore, each miner can only be used to mine one or more cryptocurrencies using the same algorithm
ant mining machine needs special mining software, and can not use third-party software. In addition, because of its high power, the ant miner also needs to be used with a special fire ox
The ant miner is often criticized as monopolizing the cryptocurrency mining instry e to its 70% market share, which goes against the purpose of cryptocurrency decentralization. Because Monroe was worried that the mining machinery would monopolize the mining market, Monroe announced to change the mining algorithm a few days after the launch of Monroe (X3 model) despite the opposition of Monroe community, so that all mining machinery could not be used to mine Monroe. Bitcontinent also encountered the failure of its first proct herethe ant miner will use a lot of electricity and proce a lot of waste heat in the process of operation. This leads to a large amount of electricity being consumed for mining or cooling, causing a lot of social criticism. Too much ant mining machine at the same time also led to fire and power failure, causing social inconvenience
At the end of March this year, bitmainland launched an ant miner X3 based on ASIC, which is mainly aimed at Monroe coin (XmR) and cryptonight algorithm dependent cryptocurrency. Monroe coin immediately issued a counter statement that it will change the core algorithm to fight against the invasion of ASIC computing power
what would be the result if it appeared in the world of digital cryptocurrency? That is, the wrong calculation results may be brought into the whole network without being discovered
More importantly, if a "calculator manufacturer" monopolizes the calculator market, it can also deliberately proce this kind of calculator with errors to change the mathematical rulesafter all, the "calculation" in the field of crypto digital currency is not as simple as 1 + 2 + 3. You can't compare paper currency with special currency by hand
the practical significance of computing power monopoly in mainland China
we have learned about attacks based on 51% computing power in various articles
but the reality is that although the global power of 78% was in Chinese mainland, fortunately, they were scattered in different pools and controlled by different people. p>
although all POW based cryptocurrencies have the risk of being attacked by 51%, few people can really launch attacks e to the dispersion of computing power
but what if the miners themselves don't want to attack, but the mining machinery manufacturers attack
still using the analogy just now, although each miner subjectively wants to do the problem checking independently, their calculator is manipulated remotely and gives consistent wrong answers. This may pose a great threat to digital cryptocurrency
however, the manufacturer with the absolute voice of mining machinery had such a problem in mainland China
in April 2017, the back door of antbled came out. Although this is described as a "vulnerability" in Chinese, antbled is more like a function that has been implemented and designed
anonymous people found that after an ant miner made by bitmainland was connected to the network, it would communicate with a domain name held by bitmainland on a regular basis and return the miner's serial number, MAC address and IP address to bitmainland's server. If the server of bitcontinent gives a negative signal, the miner will stop running
although bitcontinental responded that they could not shut down any mining machines that did not belong to them. However, the bitcoin core team has proved in experiments that this function has no verification. Anyone can shut down mining machines by forging DNS - but it also means that bitcoin mainland has the ability to shut down any sold mining machines
After, bitcontinent fixed this "loophole", but it caused heated discussion in the community. This has also set the tone that almost all pow blockchain communities are biased against mainland China
a few months later, under the leadership of bitcontinent, viabtc g out the first block and made a hard bifurcation with the blockchain of bitcoin. From then on, bitcoin BCH (bitcoin cash) appeared in the world
will the monopoly of mining machinery destroy the distributed system
facing this problem, we should have a clear answer now. That is, the monopoly of mining machinery will certainly affect the safe operation of pow digital cryptocurrency
the problem is not whether bitcontinental and its founder Wu Jihan are trustworthy, but that one of the values of any blockchain system is to operate safely without trust in any single company or indivial
even if the ASIC miner is not monopolized by bitmainland, the ASIC miner itself will increase the concentration of computing power
the ASIC used for mining has great requirements for ventilation, power and site, and has no use except for mining. At the same time, the calculation difficulty of the whole network is increased e to the powerful computing power
as a result, it is very difficult for external players to start mining in the next software on the computer as they did five years ago. And the recent centralized exchange is caused by frequent black incidents, which also proves that concentration in this unregulated market will definitely lead to insecurity
assuming that the bitcoin network runs on top of one million miners, no one can shut it down. And if the bitcoin network runs on 20 large mines, it's much easier to shut it down
and by the end of 2017, 78% of the effort was concentrated in mainland China, which led to a real possibility of Chinese mainland regulators' launching a deadly attack against the special currency. p>
moreover, most of the scenarios of using digital cryptocurrency are related to "decentralization". Once centralized, it means that these scenarios no longer exist. It turns a project that might have value into a pure waste of computing power
Then, what measures should we take in the face of this situationfirst of all, as the project side, it may be time to give up the pure POW mechanism. In fact, in many projects of issuing cryptocurrency, especially in asset securitization projects. Similar to the concept of stock in the real world, POS itself is more reasonable than pow
in the media that don't know about blockchain, we often hear such words as "bitcoin wastes a lot of computing power and has no value", which is reasonable to some extent. It is difficult for a POW based blockchain to bind the value of the project itself to the issued digital cryptocurrency - because the real value behind the price of the currency does not come from the project, but from the cost of maintaining computing power
and the hybrid mode of pow + POS is more like the future. In the hybrid mode, both coin holders and miners can participate in the major decisions of this community. If a decision is widely accepted, the blockchain will be soft forked to the latest state without excessive intervention of developers, and there will be almost no private resistance of miners or mining machines
secondly, as a retail miner, if you are still digging a pure POW mechanism currency, you should unconditionally support the bifurcation activities initiated by the community to resist the ASIC mining machine, even if it will lead to the failure of your mining machine
this may sound contradictory, but in the long run, it is better to promote the reform of the community and get more benefits in a currency controlled by the monopoly of computing power. Because in many conflicts between computing power and community in the past, the ultimate result is that the computing power owner will forcibly keep the old algorithm to hard fork the blockchain
just like Eth and etc, the classic Ethereum (etc), which belongs to the computing power master, has lost the support of developers and become an air coin with no vitality and impossible to develop applications
as a retail leek, you should be careful to trade the non mainstream digital currencies (except bitcoin) supported by bitmainland mining machinery, so as to avoid falling into a blockchain in which bitmainland controls the computing power completely
finally, if you are bitcontinent, what should you do
bitcontinent's goal is to become Intel, AMD and NVIDIA, make greater contributions to the whole computer instry, and become a great company, not just entangled in the immediate interests of mining
Wall Street financiers have long seen through the violence brought about by NVIDIA's video card mining. The rise and fall of the company's stock price has been consistent with the price of bitcoin, and even affected by the digital currency market. Citron, a well-known short seller, has recently been bearish on NVIDIA, arguing that the company has focused too much on providing services for digital currency miners rather than on serious businesses such as artificial intelligence, games and driverless driving
the mission of chip manufacturers is to provide more powerful chips to drive more intelligent services, and finally contribute to the real world, rather than become monopoly tycoons in the virtual world. When we no longer enter the gate of the virtual world, the only thing left is a deserted land
in an interview with US media last year, Wu Jihan disclosed that he would make an IPO with a market value of billions of dollars. As a company about to go public, bitmainland should not only be responsible to investors, but also accept investors' questions about the sustainability of its business. "If your mining machinery goes public, it will encounter a fork, what should you do?"
and this question, which needs to be asked after the listing, has already appeared: the current price of the split coin xmo after the Monroe team split is $7.50, while the current price of the real Monroe coin XmR is $194, and the split coin is completely abandoned by the Monroe community
before bitcontinent becomes the name of all blockchain communities, we can rely on the huge amount of capital accumulated in recent years to transform into an artificial intelligence chip company along the previous plan, rather than continue to develop a variety of digital currency mining machines to extract the last drop of oil before the ecological collapse
content source: phoenix.com
many new users believe that the sole purpose of mining is to generate ether in a way that does not require a central issuer (see our guide "what is ether?"). It's true. The token of Ethereum is proced in the process of mining, with a mining rate of 5 Ethereum coins per piece. But mining is at least as important. Usually, banks are responsible for keeping accurate records of transactions. They make sure that money is not created out of thin air and that users don't cheat and spend money many times. However, blockchain introces a new way to keep records, the whole network instead of intermediary, to verify transactions and add them to the public ledger
Ethereum mining
although "no trust" or "trust minimization" monetary system is the goal, there are still people who need to ensure the security of financial records and ensure that no one cheats. Mining is one of the innovations that makes decentralized records possible. Miners have reached a consensus on the history of transactions in terms of preventing fraud (especially double spending on ether) - an interesting issue that hasn't been addressed before the decentralized currency works on the blockchain. While Ethereum is looking at other ways to reach a consensus on the effectiveness of the deal, mining currently keeps the platform together
how mining works
today, the mining process of Ethereum is almost the same as that of bitcoin. For each transaction, the miner can use the computer to guess the answer repeatedly and quickly until one of them wins. More specifically, the miner will run the unique header metadata (including time stamp and software version) of the block through the hash function (which will return a fixed length, unordered string of numbers and letters, which appears to be random), changing only the 'nonce value', which will affect the hash value of the result
if the miner finds a hash that matches the current target, the miner will be granted ether and broadcast the block across the network for each node to verify and add to their own ledger . If miner B finds the hash, miner a stops working on the current block and repeats the process for the next block. It's hard for miners to cheat in this game. There is no way to fake the work and come up with the right answer to the puzzle. That's why solving puzzles is called "proof of work."
on the other hand, others have little time to verify whether the hash value is correct, which is exactly what each node does. About every 12-15 seconds, a miner finds a stone. If the miner starts to solve the puzzle faster or slower than this, the algorithm will automatically re adjust the difficulty of the problem so that the miner can rebound to about 12 seconds of solution time
miners earn these ethers randomly, and their profitability depends on their luck and the computing power they put in. The specific workload verification algorithm used by Ethereum is called "ethash", which aims to require more memory, making it difficult to mine with expensive ASIC. Special mining chips are now the only profitable way to mine bitcoin
in a sense, ethash may have achieved this goal successfully, because dedicated ASIC is not available for Ethereum (at least not yet). In addition, as Ethereum aims to shift from proof of work mining to "proof of equity" (which we will discuss below), buying ASIC may not be a wise choice because it may not prove useful for a long time< However, Ethereum may never need miners. Developers plan to abandon proof of work, the algorithm currently used by the network to determine which transactions are valid and protect them from tampering to support proof of equity, which is guaranteed by token owners. If and when the algorithm is launched, proof of equity can become a means to achieve distributed consensus, and the consensus uses less resources.
after Ethereum is upgraded to version 2.0 POS mechanism, miners may switch mining machines to other networks
as Ethereum is finally ready to start its Ethereum 2.0 upgrade later this year, thus eliminating the long-term delay, the network will start to move towards the proof of rights model
therefore, the network will give up the workload proof consensus algorithm, so that eth miners have little choice. As their equipment will become obsolete, they will be forced to start mining counterfeit coins or re qualify as eth mortgagors. So, what is the current situation of Ethereum mining? With the coming transition, what will happen to the whole instry< At present, Ethereum consensus is based on POW system, which is similar to bitcoin (BTC). As a result, Ethereum's mining process is almost the same, as miners use their computing resources to earn rewards for each block they try to complete< However, there are still major differences between these processes. Although bitcoin mining has relied almost entirely on ASIC (large, loud machines designed specifically for cryptocurrency mining, most of which are concentrated in areas with low electricity prices), Ethereum's pow hash algorithm ethash is designed to support global chip manufacturers (such as NVIDIA and AMD). As Thomas Heller, global business director of cryptocurrency mining pool f2pool, explained in a conversation with cointegraph, GPU is much cheaper and easier to access than ASIC
"as ASIC is a very professional machine, when a new generation of procts is released, it is usually a huge technological leap. As a result, they have a much higher hash rate and are more energy efficient than the previous generation. This means that those manufacturers have spent a lot of money to research and develop it. Their machines are usually very expensive, and GPUs are much cheaper. "
Heller added that those who use GPU miners "have more flexibility to mine." For example, the popular NVIDIA geforce GTX 1080 Ti card can mine more than 15 different currencies, while ASIC units usually support only one currency
nevertheless, Ethereum is not completely immune to ASIC miners - at least in its current state. In April 2018, bitcontinent released antminer E3, an ASIC specially proced for mining Ethereum. Although widely praised for its hash rate of 180 megahashes per second and power consumption of 800 watts, it has received different responses from the Ethereum community. After the ASIC is inserted, a considerable number of GPU rig owners seem to suffer from loss of profits, and some are even forced to switch to other networks
"in the white paper, ETH must have ASIC resistance. I would like to say that the white paper stands for something "is one of the highest comments on the AR / ethermining topic about the topic discussed when antminer E3 was announced. Another reddit user argued that "the $800 only applies to 180mh."“ Split or die of a nation. "
some Ethereum users continue to suggest that bitmain's mining devices can lead to greater concentration, thus increasing the possibility of attack by 51%. Soon, a group of developers put forward "programmed workload proof" or progpow, which is an extension of the current Ethereum algorithm ethash, aiming to make GPU more competitive and promote decentralization
according to a paper published in March by Kristy Leigh Minehan, co-founder of progpow, about 40% of the hash rate of Ethereum is generated by bitmain ASIC. Alejandro de la Torre, the vice president of poolin, is the sixth largest pool of eth. He confirmed to cointegration that "GPU mining is still dominant" in Ethereum network, and added:
"at present, the profit of eth mining is not high, and the management threshold and cost of GPU equipment are higher than ASIC equipment. Compared with ASIC devices, GPU devices are more flexible, and you can use other algorithms to switch to other coins. "
progpow has not been integrated into Ethereum, and it is not clear when it will be finally implemented - in March, Ethereum core developers were debating whether progpow will really benefit the network in nearly two hours, and failed to reach a consensus. It is worth noting that a bitmain representative has previously told cointegraph that the mining hardware giant does not intend to extend the service life of antminer E3 to start operation after October 2020: "as far as we know, mining will end in October or some time after that."
a safe but uncertain future
indeed, Ethereum will stay away from mining in the future. Ethereum 2.0, which is planned to be launched later in 2020, is a major network upgrade on the blockchain, aiming to transfer its current POW consensus algorithm to a virtual POS (known as "block verifier")
more specifically, users are randomly selected considering their wealth in the network or their "interests". In other words, the more coins a POS verifier chooses to put in, the more coins accumulated as a reward
according to vitalik buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, e to the transition, the network will be more secure and the attack cost will be higher than the network of bitcoin, although the debate about the better consensus algorithm in the encryption community has lasted for many years. However, it is not clear when to start Ethereum 2.0, as many errors and management issues are reported to be delaying the process
another hypothetical benefit of POS system is that it has higher energy efficiency than pow blockchain. According to digiconomist, the cryptocurrency's total annual footprint is 59.31 terawatts per hour, which is comparable to the electricity consumption of Greece as a whole. However, since a report in July 2019 estimated that 74% of the exploitation of bitcoin was done using renewable energy, the environmental impact of bitcoin does not seem to be so serious
what will happen to the actual Ethereum miner? According to the documentation of Casper upgrade as part of Ethereum 2.0 roadmap, the network will initially support a hybrid model including both POW and POS, thus providing some space for block verifiers and GPU / ASIC miners. Jack O & 39, CEO of skale network; "There will definitely be a transition period when two networks are running at the same time," Holleran told cointegration The CEO of scale network (based on Ethereum's blockchain platform) gave a detailed description of this process:
"the transition from eth1 to eth2 takes time of course - it may be years rather than months. The good news about this slow transition is that dapps and defi platforms will be able to roam around based on survivability, security and real-world evidence of adoption. This is a positive impact on the Ethereum ecosystem. "
dig or not
once Ethereum is fully in the POS orbit, miners will have two options. One is to sell the equipment and use the money to accumulate more Eth and start mortgage. The other is the choice for GPU miners, which is simply switching to other ethash networks and mining counterfeit money. Nick foster, a representative of kabombacks, a US mining equipment dealer, told cointegration that most eth miners would choose the latter:
"what I want to say is that most of the miners have not really entered Ethereum or the mining of specific tokens. Yes, there is a certain amount of mineral deposits and holds, but I oppose the view that a large number of Shanzhai coin miners hold their coins at any time. "<
foster then described how he used 3gb GPU units to mine ethash's point-to-point blockchain asset ravencoin (RVN). Once it was unable to mine eth, he said, "this is the reason for mining crows. I immediately sold stability to BTC, and then sold it to US dollars to pay for my rights. I would say that a lot of people are adopting this strategy. "
as foster concludes, he wants eth miners to jump out of the network, and new players - those who don't invest in power infrastructure or drilling rigs - will take a stake in eth. He described the following:
"I can't imagine if I found a five-year lease with $0.04 of electricity and I was mining eth, I decided to sell everything and then continue to pay the rent so that I could hold eth as a share. Substitute. "
Marc fresa, founder of asic.to, a mining firmware company, agreed in a conversation with cointegraph: "if you invest in mining, you won't bet because you have enough room to grow."
one of the main counterfeit coins that may benefit from POW miners leaving Ethereum is Ethereum classic (etc), which is a more conservative version of the blockchain. It is reported that there is no POS related plan. As it also runs on the ethash algorithm, the startup of Ethereum 2.0 may lead to the migration of miners, so its hash rate may have a significant peak
eth's larger pools have similar options. When asked about the company's plans for Ethereum after pow, Heller told cointegraph that after the announcement of Ethereum's POS upgrade, f2pool launched a sister company called story.fish in early 2018. Story.fish has started to provide mortgage services for other POS and delegated POS projects, such as tezos (xtz), Cosmos (atom) and Cardano (ADA), e to numerous handover delays. For prin, e to the transition to POS, it "may temporarily give up supporting eth mining," de la Torre told cointegraph
other top eth pools, namely nanopool, ethermine, pool center, sparkpool and spiderpool, did not respond to requests for comment from cointegraph.
2) in terms of algorithm, the core algorithm sha256 adopted by bed and BTC has the same value attributes, but bed has established a new economic model through new technology development; Eth uses ethash algorithm
3) from the perspective of mining cost: BTC mining is becoming more and more difficult and has become an arena for mining equipment. At present, the latest 110t ant S19 Pro mining machine has adopted the latest 7Nm chip, and the price of the machine is nearly 20000 yuan. Some low computing power machines, such as the former king ant S9, can only be eliminated, resulting in a huge waste of resources; Eth uses graphics card GPU to mine, and the cost is also quite high; And bed can dig directly with the existing bitcoin miner or the obsolete bitcoin miner with low computing power, so the cost of miner is very low and the waste of resources is reced
4) from the perspective of total amount and upgrade space: the total amount of BTC is 21 million, and the current price is about ￥ 76000; The total amount of eth will reach 113 million, and the current price is about 2500 yuan; The total amount of bed and BTC is 21 million, and there is a huge space for upgrading.